In many instances, especially when police, firemen and ambulance operators are called upon to remove victims from automobile accidents, fires and other accidents, it is necessary to transport the victim to a hospital or the like and it is preferable in the interest of risking the least amount of additional injury that his body be maintained substantially in the orientation in which it was found at the accident scene until securely in a hospital and under a doctor's care.
Conventional extrication means widely used by police and the like involves the utilization of a simple slab of plywood which is slid beneath the body of the patient in order to extricate him from a tight place, typically the front seat of a vehicle which has had the top or front portion crushed around him. Once the victim is somehow slid out of his entrapping circumstances, typically he is then stretched horizontally into the lying position on a carrying stretcher, termed a gurny.
The combination of the extrication procedure in which the only body-supporting member is a section of plywood, and the subsequent forcing of the body into the prostrate position so that it fits existing equipment runs substantial risk of further injuring the victim by causing previously broken bones to work themselves through more tissue, and otherwise jostling injured portions of the body.
Another problem area in the transportation of accident victims lies in the movement of especially fire victims out of old hotels and other buildings having narrow staircases, perhaps with numerous hairpin turns. Because the conventional gurny will not fit through these stairways, the accepted way of extricating the victim is by searching for some kind of chair, which may not be in much better shape than the victim. A pair of rescuers attempt to find some convenient place on the chair to grip and try to negotiate down the stariway without catapulting the victim head-first down the stairwell while strapped to a chair.